The Great Quest
by Red Star
Summary: Hiccup embarks on a quest to secure Astrid's heart in the best Viking fashion: by finding her the finest birthday present of all and upstaging his rival. A teenage boy, a dragon, and romance: this won't end well.
1. Chapter 1

**THE GREAT QUEST**

Chapter 1

By Red Star

Disclaimer: How to Train Your Dragon is the property of Cressida Cowell and Dreamworks. I am making no money off of it.

In loving memory of B.C., who I believe would have loved this movie.

* * *

This is a story about a quest.

A quest—at its most basic—consists of three important elements: a Hero, a Goal, and an Obstacle. This formula is by no means universal: sometimes the Hero has a sidekick/lackey; sometimes there's more than one Obstacle or Goal; hell, sometimes the Goal _is_ the Obstacle or the Hero is the Goal. There have even been a few cases of the Obstacle being the Hero. It can all be very confusing for the layman.

Questing is a solitary business; only a few people can go on it and still have it called a quest. Generally speaking, quests with more than ten people involved are considered "Odysseys", "Crusades", "Jihads", or "That Bunch of Weirdoes", depending on where you live. It's usually easier for the Hero to embark on his quest alone, if only to avoid the inevitable fights over the best sword.

In medieval Europe, a quest was considered one of the highest forms of heroism there could be. Whether it be on some divinely-commissioned search, a dashing act of proof of one's devotion to a breathtaking bride, or a simple desire to right a great wrong, quests were considered to have something for everybody.

There were critics, of course: killjoys who wondered why on Earth anybody expected to find the Holy Grail in England, of all places; cynics who said there wouldn't have been such a fuss if the king would just pay for some decent sentries to guard his virgin daughter; naysayers who strongly argued for just staying out of the friggin' caves, for pete's sake. But this was medieval Europe, of course, and there was no real forum for these views so they stayed confined to the wretched mud-stained hovels of the critics whose descendents would honor their ancestors by throwing paint at foreign restaurants.

Now, this is the story of a quest, sparked by love (as they often are) and embarked upon by a teenage boy. It should be remembered that mixing these two things together (love and teenage boys) are universally regarded as inviting disaster. This case is no different.

* * *

Berk in early springtime is a charming place: blizzards are reduced to only twice a week, snow on regularly tended paths barely reach the chin of a full grown man, and the icicles grow large enough only to stun, not kill. This is a time of awakenings, of renewal, of preparation for the work of the summer that will ensure the following winter is passed fitfully. It is also a time for the villagers to get out of their houses and away from each other; having spent the winter playing family games like "What's This Smell?" and "Whose Bed has the Pebble?", a little all-around Me-time is a matter of course.

On one particular morning, Hiccup—Son of Stoick the Vast, Heir and Hope of the Vikings of Berk—snorted awake. Pulling himself up, his eyes half-lidded, he looked dazedly around the upper floor of his house, smacked his lips, and tested the floor with his remaining foot. After heavy deliberation lasting about two and a half seconds, he concluded that the world could get by without him until approximately the time the fire downstairs was up and roaring or summer actually came to Berk. Either occasion was fine with him. Satisfied with his decision, he laid back down and pulled his furs over himself, fashioning a burrow out of the animal skins and wool beneath.

Barely a minute passed before Hiccup heard steps coming from the hole leading to the sleeping room of the house. Something big came up to his bed and loomed over him, breathing with big, exploratory puffs of air. It tilted its head and whined a bit.

"Hibernation, Toothless," Hiccup explained, "Humans my age need…uh, nineteen hours of sleep a day when its cold, otherwise we'll…I dunno, get rashes or something."

Toothless huffed.

"It's ten below outside—and I'm not talking temperature, I'm talking 'feet', as in 'the ground is ten feet below the surface of the snow'. That's bad Hiccup weather."

The dragon took gentle hold of the top fur and pulled it off.

"Oh, come on! What are you, my dad?"

"No, if it were me I'd have tipped you right out! Now come down and get your porridge!"

Hiccup opened his eyes to roll them and flung the rest of the bedding off. He rolled onto his left side—which was unpleasant and elicited a grunt—and reached down. A quick grope of the space under his bed produced a thick woolen shirt, leggings, a fur-lined leather boot, and his iron and wood false leg.

Shirt first, then pants—Hiccup had discovered that prosthetics and leggings could never negotiate—a sock wrapped around his remaining foot and he tugged on the boot. Then he picked up the leg and examined it, testing the "foot" and its attached springs. He pressed the flat metal piece upward, collapsing the spring; removing the hand brought the foot down, giving a minute bounce when the foot's shaft hit its limit.

_I'll have to work on it soon_, he thought as he maneuvered the leg's attaching cup onto his stump and began securing it. It wasn't that it was a bad leg: half a year gone by and he wasn't taking as many spills in his own house. That was the hard part, learning to make his way around his own home again, even relearning just how to climb steps. He'd prevailed on his father to move his bed back upstairs—because, he'd insisted to Stoick and Gobber, he wasn't about to let a little thing like possessing only one and a half legs force him to leave his room (and to himself admitted that he missed the quilt-like coziness of their shared room and the gentle thunder of his father's snores).

And though the leg sometimes made him feel older than he wanted to be and the damned stump ached when storms approached, he had few complaints about Gobber's work.

But the spring…

This particular component worried Hiccup. In the waning days of the last summer he'd been roughhousing with Toothless and gotten a rock in the prosthetic. He wasn't used to a firmly level (false) leg and the first step had caught him by surprise and sent him sprawling. Then they discovered that using the pedal to Toothless's tailfin would require some rather awkward contortions on Hiccup's part and they ended up taking a two-hour walk home. The leg had to be dismantled completely (not a terribly hard job, it being a Viking device and therefore having all the complexity of a spoon).

The spring was too exposed: _that_ was the great flaw in Gobber's design. Rocks and rust threatened Hiccup's (and by extension, Toothless's) mobility, and he was certain that a few adjustments would reduce the risk well into the single digits. What stopped Hiccup from setting to work on it immediately was the new rush of dragon-related business coming into the smithy and Gobber's warning that the leg might have to be replaced anyway: Hiccup _was_, despite all appearances, still a growing boy. If he hit a growth spurt, and the spring couldn't compensate for the height and weight (to say nothing of the cup), they'd have to make a whole new leg.

So, on went the prosthetic and its almost visible field of iciness that gave him a shiver as he buckled the last strap. Hiccup stood—almost jumped—up from his bed and made his way over to the steps under Toothless's watchful gaze. The boy brought his right foot down onto the first step, then followed it awkwardly with the false one. He held his hands out to the side, ready to grab onto the sides of the opening if his leg failed. Eventually, he rested his hands against the floor and made his steps down a little less timidly. The dragon stood up, considered the bed-furs thoughtfully, then lifted its nose to sniff the air, and decided to go to where the fish was.

Stoick the Vast looked up from his bowl of rather watery porridge as his son descended and kept his eyes on the boy all the way down…while still eating. This hurt his accuracy, but Stoick—who was accustomed to finding bread crusts lodged in his beard—didn't seem to mind.

"Morning, Dad,"

"Good morning," Hiccup's father gestured to the chair by his right, "Sit down; breakfast is getting cold."

Hiccup made his way over to his seat, while Toothless crept down behind him and headed straight for the box of cold, raw fish Stoick had set out. The dragon's meals were probably the best the chief had ever made.

"Gobber have you all day again?"

"No, but I think I'll try to find something to do around the shop anyway. Don't have much else to do until the snow clears."

Stoick hummed in agreement. Hiccup had never been good with snow; around him, it took on almost gang-like qualities, not just hindering him in his journeys around the village and sucking him down like a whirlpool in certain spots, but actually seeming to coordinate avalanches upon his head. Gobber had once noticed a particularly large white lump sitting on his rooftop's edge; unmoved by various huge vikings with a habit of slamming doors to announce their coming and going, it had sat until Hiccup opened the door to leave. Gobber heard "See you tommorWAAH!" and turned to find his apprentice's legs sticking out from beneath a hill of snow. It became a storied example of Hiccup's bad luck, though he continually insisted he had heard an evil chuckle as the snowdrift "leapt" at him.

"You, Dad?"

"Still getting the ships ready," Stoick took a mouthful of porridge and looked like it was made of lemon, "Could use more, but—," he shrugged, "can't be helped. We should be able to at least get enough grain back here to last until we've finished the new ships. Then we'll be able to make another voyage."

A second voyage to Skall was quite a novelty, almost as much as welcoming dragons into the village. Before the battle last summer, Berk had sent its ships to the larger village (and island) off the coast of the mainland only once a year, to trade sheep, wool, fish, and some raw iron for grain and things that Stoick's people couldn't grow themselves. It was made before the dragon raids and the almost traditional attempts to retaliate started up. For the rest of the year, the ships were tied up, but now…

"Need anything from the shop, Dad?"

"No, no," Stoick finished his meal with a slurp and tossed his bowl into a pile in the corner, "we've got all we need; they have smiths of their own. If anything, I'd like to take more sheep; doesn't feel right to have so few coming with us."

Toothless added his own slurp as he finished off his own breakfast. Anywhere else, Hiccup might be praised for his comparatively well mannered pace, but in this household he received stares full of wonder at why he was taking so long. Taking the hint, he tipped his own bowl up and shoveled the rest of the porridge into his mouth before tossing it at his father's dishes and standing up. All three inhabitants of the most prestigious bachelor's pad on Berk made their way to the door. Stoick already had his fur cloak on, and Hiccup pulled on a smaller version, made from the same kill. The chief opened his door and was greeted by a knee high (to him) wall of snow.

"Look, son," he said cheerfully, "Spring is here!"

Hiccup looked at the snow, which came up to his chest, "You think so, Dad?"

"Of course!"

An icicle two feet long and about as thick as Hiccup's index finger fell from the roof and buried itself like a dagger in the snow.

"See? That would just scratch your head instead of breaking it open. We'll be seeing green again before too long."

"Yeah," the boy sighed, "and we'll finally find the bodies the snow covered up; yay spring cleaning,"

Stoick patted his son on the shoulder, gently enough that he only stumbled a little.

"Better mount up; I'm off to the docks and then to Mead Hall. Its your turn to cook dinner tonight," the chief then lumbered into the snow, plowing a path for his son and the dragon, "See you then."

"Bye Dad!" Hiccup called after his father. He watched the man move, as undeniable in his path as a boulder rolling downhill. "Someday, Toothless," he declared to the waiting dragon, "that'll be me: the village chief, letting no one and nothing keep him from his duty,"

He paused and then continued: "And we'll not only fly on dragons, but pigs too."

Toothless had half closed his eyes and gave a rumbling snort, which could have meant he was laughing, disagreeing, or saying "or maybe we'll fly on you." Sometimes Hiccup wondered if being around Stoick and himself so much was having some sort of effect on Toothless. The dragon seemed to be more sarcastic lately.

Hiccup patted his friend on the head, which warned Toothless what would happen next. The dragon lowered his head so that Hiccup could comfortably swing up onto his back and they could begin the trek towards Gobber's shop.

Winter was not a good time for a recent amputee, and the fact that it was in Berk only made things worse. The leg ached in the cold and the false foot malevolently slipped on every patch of ice it met. Determined as he was to not allow the leg to interfere with his life, Hiccup discovered that it took only one near tumble down the steps leading to his house (stopped by Toothless's teeth on his tunic) for Stoick to forbid him from going anywhere without a travel companion. Since this most often turned out to be Toothless it wasn't so bad, but it brought another problem with the leg into the light: its flat surfaces offered no resistance to slippery ice. The weight he shifted in his walking limp didn't help either.

Toothless didn't have such problems, as he showed today: splaying the claws on his feet and rapidly crawling across the snow and ice alike with skill and great recovery on occasions that he did skid. He darted down the hill surprisingly fast, allowing his limbs only a millisecond to sink in before moving again.

While Toothless skittered across the snow, Hiccup looked over at the ocean. The great crack in the ice had widened even more the previous night; a skilled Viking sailor could easily take his ship down it and into the open sea without touching the frozen sides, and Berk had no shortage of skilled sailors. It helped that Zipplebacks could explosively widen the passage, but Stoick had allowed it only a few times: that far out at sea, he worried about passing sailors sighting the dragons.

Phleghma left her house and waved, which Hiccup returned. There were teams already out shoveling around the pathways and Toothless almost ran one over a few houses from Gobber's shop. They turned a corner to find someone coming by with a shovel and the startled dragon stopped with great effect. The viking was quite startled at first, but gave a laugh.

"Morning, Hiccup," he said cheerfully, and then nodded to the dragon, "Toothless,"

"Sorry about that…and mornin',"

"A few flakes," the man said dismissively, wiping off his beard as he pulled himself out of the new snow bank Toothless had created, "Should have paid more attention, that's all,"

"Didn't mean to scare you like that,"

"Scared? Me? I told you before, my boy; just got a little surprised is all,"

"But you said that word…"

"Ah yeah, please don't repeat that around your father. Give him my best, by the way."

"Sure,"

"Nice talking with you, Hiccup, but I should probably get back to work. Now where's my shovel?"

"Up there," Hiccup pointed to the roof above them, "It flew up there when you flung your hands up and yelled."

"So it is," the man looked up and frowned thoughtfully, "Thank you. Off to Gobber's, then?"

"Yup,"

"I won't keep you, then. Say 'hi' to him for me, would you?"

"You got it," Toothless slithered off the snow and onto the recently cleared square.

Gobber was at work on some tools when dragon and boy came in. His greeting was warm as always.

"Close the bleedin' door! Poor Flint'll catch cold!"

Hiccup rolled his eyes, catching Toothless's pupils completing a circle of their own. The door closed firmly and Flint chirped something that may have been either "thank you" or "I'm hungry".

"Morning, Gobber,"

"Mornin', Hiccup," the blacksmith declared cheerfully from one of the fires. Flint was perched on top of the attached bellows, large eyes leaving the hot coals for a moment to look at the arrivals. The example of the Terrible Terror used for dragon combat training, Flint was the last of the captive dragons to be freed. Too small to carry anybody or actually fight, Hiccup had left the little fire breather in his cell when he'd taken his former classmates into battle. Strangely enough, Gobber had been the one to open the heavy door and took the creature home; turned out he'd always had a little fondness for the Terror, which had always been admittedly the type with the fewest human kills attributed to it. Now it lived with Gobber above his shop and tended to the fires.

Toothless eyed the smaller dragon and gave a breathy grunt, moving over to Hiccup's usual workplace while the boy hung up his furs. Donning a leather apron, he limped over to his dragon's side and smiled down at the great beast.

"Okay, Toothless: light,"

Light just meant that: light the hearth with the lightest flame Toothless could manage. Toothless opened his mouth, lit his gas, and exhaled a white stream of fire onto the coals, moon-colored flames dancing across the hearth, fading into purplish tongues and then the red-hued glow of the more mundane hot coals.

Hiccup usually blinked at the igniting flash that would come from the dragon's mouth, but he loved watching Toothless when his fire was in a stream, not a bolt. It was beautiful. He frequently imagined that the flames of Night Furies were used to forge Mjolnir and other weapons wielded by the gods. There just seemed to be something of the divine in that searing hot breath.

"Thanks, bud," he patted Toothless's head, then—deciding to spoil the dragon a little—scratched in a certain place on the neck that made Toothless purr. Smiling, he reached for the first problem of the day: a short sword belonging to Grem the Greyheaded, nicked and a little bent, eventually destined for his youngest son—after a little attention from the village blacksmith's best apprentice of course.

Hiccup held the sword up in the light and examined the sharp edge of the blade; he actually was fairly knowledgeable about swords, much in the way young children become experts on things they are absolutely not permitted to have. The main problem was a slight curve that began near the middle of the blade and brought the tip noticeably off center. A little fire, a few strikes with a hammer, then a trip to the spinning whetstone, and Grem's son would have a perfectly handsome inheritance.

He was just about to put the blade in the fire when a voice startled him.

"Hey, Teach!"

A teenager a few months older than Hiccup and several dozen pounds heavier stood in the flung-open doorway, a wind sending his long hair flying and his fur waving. Resembling the offspring of an unmade bed and a barrel of old apples (due to both his broadness and a frequent accompanying smell), looking at them with eyes the color of rocks in a dirty river, here was a quintessential viking specimen, the future of Berk.

Here was Snotlout.

Hiccup had turned from the hearth, sword in hand, to stare at his former classmate and eternal cousin in surprise. Snotlout's father was diligent about his weapons and had already had them attended to long before winter had come. Since Snotlout took his swords and axes from his family collection, Hiccup couldn't think of a single reason why his cousin was here. At the shop. While _he_ was working.

"Were ye raised in a barn? Close the door!"

Actually, Snotlout had spent a year living in a barn, which isn't really the same as being "raised" but is pretty close. However, it seemed that Gobber wouldn't be interested in this little tidbit and so the door slammed shut.

"Right then, what do ya want?" Gobber lumbered out from behind his work station. One of the pieces to a new pair of shears glowed hotly in the tongs on his left hand. Hiccup stepped away from his hearth too, careful to avoid Toothless's tail.

"A job," Snotlout said, he reached into his coat and began pulling out a stained piece of paper, "I want you guys to make a dagger,"

_A commission?_ Hiccup was a little surprised, but then his cousin was probably just getting started on his own weapon collection early. Odin knew Astrid's parents were constantly borrowing from hers, though her favorite remained the battle-axe.

Thinking of the axe made him smile a little. He'd made it himself, the first complete weapon Gobber had allowed him to make with little more supervision than a grunted "well done, lad." When she had started toting it around with her wherever she went, he'd felt ten feet taller and walked around with a spring in his steps that lasted until his latest device—the Sling-Spitter—proved to be less helpful in the next raid than he'd hoped.

It was Gobber's shop, so he would handle the details. The blacksmith had just taken the paper and its scrawled drawings as Hiccup turned to limp back to his hearth when Gobber spoke.

"A flower on the pommel?"

Hiccup froze, his foot in midair—his real one. He managed to catch himself on a nearby work table, but Toothless had raised his head in alarm and stared at him. Trying to act casually, he turned his head back toward the front, where Gobber towered over Snotlout, blocking the teens' view of each other.

_A flower?_

"Hey, it isn't for me," Snotlout said defensively, meaty hands raised like a shield, "I just drew that cause' I thought she'd like it,"

"She?"

_SHE?_

Hiccup brought up the short sword and began dancing his thin fingers on the blade.

"Yeah, it's a birthday present,"

"Oh? Well, a practical one's usually the best. Who's the lucky lady?"

"You remember Astrid?"

_Astrid._

Hiccup's fingers stopped moving on the blade.

"Let me think now…teenage girl, blond hair…"

_Hair the color of life-giving wheat, flowing like sunlight in liquid form…_

"…blue eyes…"

…_the blue of a sky after a thunderstorm…_

"…likes to use axes.."

…_better than any viking past, present, and future…_

"…rides a Deadly Nadder…"

…_and in a way that is the envy of the Valkyries…_

"…does that describe her?"

_Barely._

"Yeah, that's her!"

"Never heard of her," Gobber replied with a bored expression as he looked at the drawing again, "Seems like a simple job; we have a few pommels we can work with in the back. Shouldn't be more than a week."

"Awesome!" Snotlout had a look on his face not dissimilar to one Toothless displayed when Stoick forgot to lock the fish box.

"This will cost you some, though,"

"Nah, don't worry. I'm good for it."

Muttering to himself, Gobber moved to the side, forcing Snotlout to jump aside himself to avoid the red hot shear. Hiccup was revealed then, still holding the sword and smiling in a disconcerting fashion.

"Hi, Snotlout," he said cheerfully.

"Hey, Hiccup," Snotlout, bless his heart, had no idea what "disconcerting" means and therefore no alarm bells went off.

Hiccup began bouncing the blade in his hand, the other still holding the grip, "Birthday shopping, huh?"

"Yeah, for Astrid,"

Hiccup showed teeth in his smile and spoke through them, "So I heard,"

"Its her sixteenth, you know, so I thought I'd try and go for something special, y'know, cause it's a coming of age thing," Snotlout paused as he noticed the sword, "What's with the sword?"

"This?" Hiccup looked down at the blade and lifted it up, waving it a little menacingly, "I'm fixing it for Grem the Greyheaded. Just needs a little time in the fire and soon enough I'll be able to take your head _cleeean_ off with it!"

"You?"

"It's an expression,"

"Oh, right," Snotlout said agreeably.

"So, when is…"

"The party? In three weeks! It'll be awesome, Harll will be there with his band and…"

As Snotlout began describing the various plans for the party, both real and rumored, happily indulging in fantasies of long nights with plenty of drink, Hiccup thought.

And as any one from Berk will tell you: when Hiccup of Berk thinks, Berk trembles.

Three weeks. Twenty one days in which to plan, prepare, and act. The challenge so unwittingly delivered would be met.

Astrid would be his.

And so, the Great Quest began…


	2. Chapter 2

**THE GREAT QUEST**

CHAPTER 2

By Red Star

* * *

When one considers the context of the times, Hiccup's reaction was actually fairly rational.

In those days, love—as it is now—was a complicated matter. It existed, but so did unicorns, and guess how many people were around to see those? True love seemed something of a luxury, hence in the eyes of many it became—like gold, furs, and bread that was actually made out of some sort of grain—mainly a plaything for the royal dynasties of Europe. That is why so many love stories from the time revolve around princes, princesses, or some other kind of blueblood finding true love. Commoners were left with what some would call "Sufficient Love" or "Good-Enough Love". The difference is that with "True Love", as it was commonly understood it, two people looked at each other and see the completeness of themselves, a future of warmth, glad laughs, shared fears and heartbreak, beautiful children, and the strength of joined souls. In "Sufficient Love", two people look at each other and see someone who probably won't snore too loudly at night.

But the truth was—and is—that True Love could be felt and had by anybody, and that it wasn't an easy thing to do. Frequently, it started in just one half of the couple, and that unlucky person would have to try and spread it to their future love, somewhat like a virus (and like a virus, the results often disgusted observers). They would work at it, and no mason at his rocks or carpenter at his timber ever put as much of their blood and sweat into their tasks. And like the members of those trades, people who feel True Love fear and hate the bumbling outsider bursting into their work and sending it all clattering down.

Hiccup, you must understand, believed he had True Love.

* * *

Love between vikings was a rough affair; it could be difficult to distinguish between the men and the womenfolk from a few yards away and downright impossible on foggy days. Vikings honored the manly: bulging muscles; mead-heavy breath that could be used to anesthetize people; hands that had calluses like gloves; great fields of hair on the face, the chest, and arms. Since this applied to a third of the viking women, the men had to step up their own manliness when courting.

This brings us, of course, to Hiccup. He knew, of course, that he was no one's idea of a viking. Even people who had never heard of vikings wouldn't make him their first choice for an example. It got worse when you compared him to his cousin, Snotlout.

When he was six, Snotlout had placed third in a junior ax throwing competition. Hiccup was disqualified when his ax fell short of a target that was ten feet away by twelve feet.

Snotlout already had a growth of beard that gave his face a darker tone, and light mustache that wasn't at all pleasant to look at but was still pretty impressive for a teenage viking. Hiccup aspired to someday have a full crop of nose hairs grow in.

Snotlout's could lift most of his body weight by age seven and once took a box weighing over a hundred pounds from the deck of a ship and carried it uphill into the village to the furthest side of the settlement, where it turned out he'd gotten the wrong address and brought it back clear across town. Hiccup had to lie down for fifteen minutes after just listening to this story.

Snotlout was also taller, but that went without saying.

So, Hiccup knew that in the battle of desirability, he'd come to the field waving a white handkerchief (and not a very manly one either). Still, he did have a few things going for him: heir to the village's leadership (something that wasn't quite so cringe-inducing to the villagers as before), and the most extreme battle wound of his generation. The former, he knew through bitter experience, didn't impress girls as one would assume, but wounds gained in combat, especially the mortal, to-the-death kind? Proven chick bait.

Still, when you put the advantages and disadvantages side by side, as Hiccup was doing at the moment, you would find one list was shorter than the other. Making up for these shortcomings occupied his mind throughout the day at the smithy and then the evening at home while he cut up ingredients for the stew that night.

Stoick had come home in a cheerful mood, but he was now visibly wincing at each severe chop that issued from the table as his son vehemently attacked an onion. Seated in front of the fire, Toothless sitting off to another side, he watched with a small bewilderment as Hiccup finished off the onion and dumped it into the bubbling pot above the flames and got started on some beets. All the ingredients tonight were being prepared rapidly, almost tersely, as if the boy and the vegetables had had some intense argument before the chief had come home.

"Did something happen at the shop?" he whispered to Toothless before he could stop himself. He'd practically been alone with the dragon during Hiccup's convalescence and had developed some habits that he'd prefer to break; admittedly, he did miss the conversations.

The Night-Fury opened his mouth and gave a low warble, which may have been "Yes", "No", or "You think?" Stoick was no expert, but he thought that Toothless should probably spend a little less time around Hiccup and his sarcasm.

"How was your day?" he asked his son.

"Fine," Hiccup said, "Usual stuff: sharpening, straightening, fastening, bending…"

"Bending?"

"Barka's mad at her husband again,"

"Ah," Stoick watched Hiccup add a sheep hoof to the stew (the secret ingredient), "anything else?"

Hiccup paused with the ladle and looked up thoughtfully.

"Oh, yes," he said in a distant voice, "Snotlout came in with a job."

The chief waited for his son to expand on that thought but Hiccup just stirred their supper for a few minutes and taste-tested it.

"Needs a little salt, but its almost ready, Dad. Can you get Toothless's supper?"

"Sure," Stoick got up and headed for the back door. In the snow was a heavy closed basket he'd brought up from the docks, where the village's cache of fish was kept. He picked it up in one huge hand and carried it in.

"What sort of job?"

"Huh?"

Stoick asked again, a little more than half-interested, "What does Snotlout want from you and Gobber?"

"Oh; he wants a dagger,"

"Really? He always struck me as a hammer sort of lad," the chief's personal favorite, it was heavy and clunky but it was wonderfully satisfying to use. He opened the basket and began pulling out fish, looking them over, and then throwing them into Toothless's box by the table. In the winter, Berk's fishermen relied on hooks to catch their quarry and, inevitably, some of these got stuck in a catch's jaws. The wise examined their dinner when they brought it home and the less-so discovered a surprise catching on their lip.

"Actually, it isn't for him," Hiccup said. Having collected some bowls and spoons from the cupboard, he began laying them out on the table. If he set down his own wooden bowl with audibly greater force than needed, Stoick didn't notice.

"Oh, a gift? They make fine presents, daggers. Hand me a knife, would you?" Sure enough, an iron barb was tangled in the flesh of a cod's upper lip. He turned with the fish dangling from his left hand and continued with his line of thought, "You know your grandfather gave one to your grandmum and he said the next thing they knew it they were marri—"

There was a whir, a flash of iron spinning in the air, and suddenly the cod was pinned to the wooden staircase by a knife. Hiccup was standing by the opened cupboard, right arm lowering, his left eye twitching.

"Ah, thanks," Stoick said, pulling out the knife and the fish, flipping the blade to work the hook out. He idly wondered when his son had started passing knives like they did on the ships at sea, but shrugged it off as the hook came free. Toothless barely noticed the fish being tossed into his box, as he was busy sitting up straight-backed and breathing in loud gasps.

"Anyway, as I was saying," Stoick decided he was imagining the dragon looking appalled at him. "Straight to the alter, from what my father told me. Simple thing, but lots of meaning. Hard to beat."

"Is that so?"

Compared to Hiccup's smile, Berk might as well have been in the tropics.

* * *

"Gentlemen, I've called you here because we have a crisis on our hands."

Hiccup had hung up a few broad sheets of paper on the wall of his house. On the first one, covering the others, he'd written "Top Secret" and in smaller letters: "This means you don't tell anybody, okay?"

Facing him, across the fire pit where a shallow pot hung low over glowing coals, were four figures seated at the chief's table. He'd pulled it over from its usual place in just five minutes (after he got Toothless to help him).

Hiccup reached up and pulled down the first sheet, revealing a drawing of Snotlout that was hastily done but which he believed was instantly recognizable and captured his cousin's essence.

"This is what we're facing: one of the best young vikings Berk has. Five feet tall, weight unknown. Can lift over a hundred pounds, excellent in hand-to-hand combat but throwing skills aren't really up to snuff. Weapon preference is the war hammer, particularly one that he has named 'Smashlout'."

He went on in detail, describing Snotlout's training record, his house, his eating habits, the last time he bathed, the makeup of his clothing, and what side he slept on in bed. Mistaking the looks on the faces of his audience for deep attention, he took down the sheet to reveal another quick sketch he'd made, this time of Astrid. Neither drawing was his best work, in his opinion, but they served.

"In a few weeks, Astrid will celebrate her coming of age; one of the most important days of her life. Snotlout," Hiccup gestured to the drawing on the floor, "intends to present her with a gift he thinks will win her affection. That's not going to happen."

Hiccup strode—well, limped purposefully—around the fire and put his hands on the table, looking each member of his assembled brain trust in the eye.

"I let him take the first move and that was a mistake. Now the only option is to upstage him so spectacularly that any attempt to fight back will be useless.

"You're here because I know that between the four of you we will find a way to overshadow Snotlout and his dagger. When Astrid's birthday comes around, I want my gift to cause one of those amazed gasps that women do—and, yes, I'm sure she won't gasp herself. I'll be happy just having it from the guests.

"I need ideas. Just give it to me and I'll take care of it; no one need know your involvement. Let's start with you," he snapped his head over to the figure most to his left.

The addressed viking shared a look with his compatriots at the table, cleared his throat, and shared his wisdom.

"Uh, Hiccup, I really don't know what you're talking about. I'm here because you said there were going to be dumplings."

"I know, Fishlegs," Hiccup replied, "But you're here and I need ideas. Come on," he briskly waved his fingers towards his palm.

"Well, I don't know," Fishlegs brought his fingers together and tapped them nervously, "Flowers? That's a good fallback,"

Hiccup looked at him with deadpan eyes, "First of all, Fishlegs, its spring in Berk…"

"Gotcha,"

"Second, it's a coming-of-age gift, not an apology for losing the family goat. Thanks for trying. Next,"  
The second figure looked positively eager to help.

"You have an idea?"

"Oh yeah; you came to the right man," Tuffnut was being generous with himself. "I've had to deal with girls and birthdays all my life!"

Personally, Hiccup remembered that he'd only realized Ruffnut was a girl when he was nine but he didn't mention this, only nodded for Tuffnut to continue.

"Now we do the same thing every year: on the night before our birthday, we both sneak away from the house, see," he made a walking motion with two fingers, "and we go into the woods,"

A little odd, but Hiccup still listened.

"While we're there, we look for snakes—not poison ones, of course," this Tuffnut said with raised hands, "Then we take them home and go to bed. The first to wake up gets to dump _all_ the snakes in the other's bed!" he gave an uncharacteristic smile of nostalgic warmth.

This little tidbit of Tuffnut's ostensibly soft side was greeted with looks of appalled pity and disappointment (that was not unexpected). Hiccup stared at him for a moment.

"Well…thanks, Tuffnut; the helpfulness of that story is only exceeded by your own,"

"No problem, man!" the other viking sat back with a pleased grin. Then he thought about what Hiccup had just said.

"Wait, what do—"

"Moving on," Hiccup turned to the third person at the table, "You know what I'm looking for: go."

The figure shifted in his seat and eyed the boy speculatively, pursing his lips and drumming his fingers thoughtfully on the table. Older than the others and wiser in the ways of the world and women (many believed that these were interchangeable), he was probably the best suited to give the advise Hiccup was seeking.

"So, _are_ there any dumplings or what?" Gobber asked.

Hiccup rolled his eyes, pulled a rag out of his vest, turned around and grabbed the pan from its place over the firepit. The lid was snapped off with a flourish and a cloud of steam billowed upwards in a white bloom, revealing a pile of golden pastries stuffed with mutton. Gobber and Fishleg's hands shot out, collided, and then engaged in a brief slap fight, until they snatched up a few of the treats, an old family recipe that had been closely guarded by Hiccup's ancestors.

"All right, I've fed you," _again,_ Hiccup thought; Gobber tended to invite himself over a lot. "Now tell me what you think,"

The blacksmith popped a dumpling in his mouth and chewed thoughtfully for a moment, and then shrugged.

"I think ye're thinking too much about this,"

Hiccup blinked at that, "Excuse me?"

"All this," Gobber waved his tankard prosthetic towards the drawings, the table and the other members of the brain trust. "Ye've always had a habit of trying to find ways around things—which isn't bad, mind ye—but sometimes ye're trying to find your way in through a window when there's a wide-open door just waitin' for ye. Just trust yer instincts and do the best you can. Astrid's a sharp girl; she won't make a decision just based on what boy gets to her first with the prettiest bauble."  
Gobber sat back, trying to cross his arms in a self-satisfied fashion, but ended up hitting his chin with the tankard. Fishlegs and Tuffnut regarded him with unfamiliar looks on their faces. Hiccup didn't say anything—just stared into space with an expression of deep, heart-searching thought, unconsciously rubbing his left leg.

Finally, he turned to the fourth member of the brain trust. "Okay, buddy; what've you got for me?"

In shadow, the figure tilted its head and made a long hum of deliberation. Hiccup nodded in encouragement, while Gobber looked on in exasperation for a moment before remembering the dumplings and reaching for them (much like a dog, Gobber was quite forgiving of those who fed him).

Finally, there was a low sound in the figure's throat. He leaned forward toward the table, emitting a series of squishy warnings that some system was going backwards. With a wet cough, Toothless deposited a salmon in front of Hiccup, making a slimy smack as it hit the wood.

The four humans quietly stared at the spit-coated offering while a proud Toothless sat back on his haunches.

Fishlegs shrugged, "Better than what I came up with,"

"Worse things to give a girl."

"I have to say, it _is_ a fine looking fish."

Hiccup congratulated himself on not pinching the bridge of his nose. "Well…thanks, Toothless, that's…an idea. But this won't keep until her birthday."

The dragon exhaled in a puff.

"Well, this has been…productive," Hiccup clapped his hands together, "Thanks for coming. Have another dumpling for the road. Toothless and I have some planning to do,"

Fishlegs grabbed another handful of food and fled out the door, leaving a deeply contemplative Tuffnut to close the door as he left muttering "…and then he said 'Thanks, Tuffnut…'"

Gobber still sat, sipping at his ale as he watched Hiccup limp back over to the wall, pick up his papers, and return to the table. Toothless took the salmon back with relish and jumped onto a rafter to hang by his tail, tucking his wings around him. There were a few dumplings left and the blacksmith skillfully flipped one into his gaping maw. His apprentice was examining one of the sketches thoughtfully. The other was lying on the table.

"Didn't recognize Snotlout at first," Gobber said conversationally.

"What?"

"Well, ye had this hand up here," Gobber pointed out. "If yer drawing somebody, ye probably shouldn't have them picking their nose. And this—what's this line from his head to this circle thing?"

"…drool…"

"Oh," he had another sip of his drink. "Ye were better with the Astrid one, though,"

Hiccup frowned as he looked at the sketch in his hands. "You think so?"

"Having the huge wave crashing into a rock behind her was a nice touch; all that spray: very theatrical."

"I don't think I got the ax right; my hand was getting tired: hair blowing in the wind is harder than I thought."

"Did you have to have it crooked back like that? Doesn't that make it harder to draw?"

"But then it wouldn't really be her."

Gobber didn't know how to reply, so he just gave a grunt. Still, there was something in what Hiccup had said…

"Listen, Hiccup," with a final swig, he took to his feet, "Think about what I said, all right?"

"Right, with all the instincts and doors and windows…"

"_Think_ about it," Gobber said sternly as he turned to the door. "Ye've already got her favor. It doesn't have to be as hard as you're making it out to be, y'know,"

_Right: it's only as hard as the world makes it_.

"I've got to get back to the shop," Gobber declared, pulling on his coat, "the ships sail tomorrow and I haven't finished up my list yet. Let's see," he made a few soundless murmurs with his lips. "Can you think of anything else we'll need from Skall?"

Hiccup had picked up the cooled pan and was standing by the firepit, a look of surprised consideration on his face.

"Hiccup?"

"Huh?" the boy said, blinking a few times. "Oh, right; no, can't think of anything besides those tools we talked about,"

Gobber looked at him doubtfully for a moment, and then decided that he was too busy to try and interrogate the boy. Couldn't be anything _too_ damaging to property this time, could it?

When the blacksmith left, a smile began to cross Hiccup's face. The solution had been there all along and he'd been so wrapped up in what Snotlout was doing that he couldn't see it.

Skall was the answer. The island and village that sat midway between the mainland Kingdom of Kress and its further flung isles was a bustling port, a favored meeting place of viking traders and warriors, where fleets anchored on their journeys to and from Europe and beyond for resupply and trade or sell what booty they didn't want to drag back to their homes. Furs, weapons, armor, pots, books, scrolls, tools, spices, grains, seeds, medicines, information and more were all available for a price on Skall. Barter and coins were all accepted, and Skall's chieftain wasn't all that fussy about what country the coins were from either.

Hiccup would find _something_ in Skall; he wasn't sure what it would be, but he decided that with an assured wealth of choices, discovering something perfect would be easy. And if he just found some raw material to work with, then so much the better: a personal touch would add meaning.

The smile threatening to reach his ears, Hiccup finally turned from his thoughts and hobbled into the back of his house, where some water awaited his pan. His father had become more interested in schooling his son as his heir; surely part of that education should involve visiting their neighboring tribes, right? And what better place to become acquainted with their fellow vikings than one of the biggest common gathering points, where, coincidentally, Berk's vikings were just sailing to anyway? On that logic, Stoick had to agree, and with that thought, Hiccup began to scrub the pan with all the cheer of one whose future is happily planned out.

* * *

"Oh, come on!"

Hiccup had his hands raised in exasperation as his father busily stuffed another pair of leggings into his bag.

"I'm sorry, son," and to Stoick's credit, he wasn't happy about his refusal. "We've got the ships loaded up already with the sheep and provisions, and we've got to have places for the men. There's just no room."

The chief had been surprised when Hiccup had sidled up to him as he was packing and suggesting that, as the heir, perhaps he should accompany his father on his journey, to watch him dealing with the other tribes and merchants and learn by his example. It wasn't a bad idea, even if he could tell his son had an agenda of his own: Stoick reckoned that even if Hiccup had other plans, he'd still pick up some experiences. Still, the situation was what it was.

"Can't we bump a sheep or something?"

"I would if we had more ships," Stoick looked at his son. "But we need all of those sheep, Hiccup; as it is we've only got a fraction of the stock we usually take to market, and with all the other goods we're taking it was hard enough just to fit the crew we need to actually sail the ships."

"Well, then, I can take over for one of the crew," Hiccup was getting desperate now. "It'd be good experience. Can't ride Toothless all the time," the dragon drowsily raised an ear momentarily in his corner, "Besides, I am a viking now,"

Stoick turned and regarded him thoughtfully for a moment. Then he shook his head.

"Sorry, Hiccup,"

He pulled his bag shut, slung it over his shoulder, and headed down the stairs. For his size, Stoick was quite fast and he had reached the bottom just as Hiccup was maneuvering to put his foot on the first step. Toothless roused himself from his corner and skittered over, blinking his huge eyes. In his haste, Hiccup tried to descend more rapidly than he had ever dared since he lost his foot and, miscalculating a step halfway down, toppled over. He gasped, and held out his arms instinctively while Toothless darted forward and caught the boy's shirt in his suddenly toothy mouth. Hiccup's legs swept over the side, and Toothless crawled towards the edge and tried to drop him gently to the floor. Of course, since Hiccup was missing a limb essential to a balance landing, he fell over when he hit the floor but quickly pulled himself up. He remembered to utter his thanks to the bewildered dragon before hobbling over, pulling on his coat, and opening the door. Increasingly alarmed, Toothless managed to leap through before Hiccup absentmindedly shut him in.

The chief was walking away from the steps leading up to his house when they emerged. Calling out to his father, Hiccup began limping down the stairs—much to Toothless's horror. The stone steps had been swept clean and there was only a little ice on perhaps three of them, but Hiccup was moving like he still had a complete set of legs. The dragon kept up with his rider, nudging him in the side, trying to remind him that he wasn't supposed to be walking around without help. Hiccup distractedly pushed at Toothless's head, never an easy thing to do due to the dragon possessing a neck that was significantly thicker than Hiccup's entire body. He suddenly went off balance and fell onto his rear, drawing a concerned warble from the Night Fury. But the boy just pushed himself up, clinging to the dragon for a moment before continuing his march down the last few steps, where his father was looking at him with a concerned scowl.

"You're not supposed to do that."

"Is this about my leg?"

The scowl left Stoick's face and he blinked in surprise. Then he turned back towards the docks, saying: "Not at all."

Hiccup ignored Toothless's nudges and limped after his father. "Dad, I _am_ a viking."

"Did I say you weren't?"

_Not since that day…that awful day…_

"I have to learn these things."

"…I know."

"Than, why not now?"

"_Why_ now?" Stoick slowed his stride to allow his son to catch up. "Hiccup, I told you we're short on ships and space. We won't even have elbow room until the trip back."

"Dad—_look_ at me. Put me in there and you'll have room for elbows _and_ knees."

Stoick rolled his eyes and replied, "That might be true, Hiccup; but Elder Gothi's read the clouds and says we'll meet a storm on our way. All the sailors have gone through rough waters and there's no time to teach you anything."

Hiccup grimaced at the thought of being in a tossing ship, battered by waves and freezing sleet, trying to quiet panicking sheep while keeping his own pants unsoiled, fighting malicious winds that would pull at the sails and send the vikings spinning off course.

And then, in his mind, he saw Astrid.

"So, I'll learn on the job," Hiccup declared. "That's Gobber's method."

Stoick's reply to that was a roll of the eyes as they moved past the smithy and gave a half-hearted wave to the blacksmith.

"Hiccup, its just a bad time. When summer comes, you'll get a chance."

Stoick paused at the pathway to the docks and looked at his son.

"Besides, there is something you need to do here."

Hiccup blinked. "Huh?"

"Remember we talked about revising the dragon manual? You can get started on that while I'm gone," the chief reached into a pouch on his belt and pulled out a ring of keys. Fumbling through them, he pulled off an iron one that was as thick as Hiccup's little finger. "Here; this is the key to the Archives. Our family's papers should have some notes you could use."

His son took the key doubtfully and looked at his father. He opened his mouth to speak again but Stoick lifted a finger.

"Hiccup, I _am_ sorry. There's no helping it." he turned to step onto the path leading down to the docks, "I'll probably be back in a few weeks or so. Take care of the house and good luck with your work," he looked at Toothless, who was watching Hiccup warily, "And you look after my boy, you great beast."

It was something of an endearment, and Toothless's response was to glance at the chief and give a replying chirp, which might have been "I will" or "You're not the boss of me".

Definitely too much time around Hiccup.

Hiccup watched his father trudge down the path to the ships, waiting until the huge man had turned a corner and disappeared beneath the wooden planks before he cautiously made his way over to the edge to look down at the ships.

Four ships floated, lashed to the docks. Each one sported what looked to be a virtual carpet of sheep. Their bleating echoed all the way up to Hiccup, who was joined by a hungry looking Toothless. As he stared, he began to think, trying to form a plan. Flying to Skall would be uncomfortably beyond his comfort range; there were few islands between Berk and Skall, all of them small and able to support little more than a few trees. He didn't think Toothless could make it all the way to Skall on a single flight and he wasn't enamored with the idea of trying to find one of the scattered islets with a tired dragon at night.

No, the ships were the best way to get to Skall. He gazed down and caught a glimpse of his father as he turned a corner. Stoick would be on the first ship out, and the others would take a few minutes to leave the docks. If the crews on those ships weren't watchful, then…

He was startled out of his thoughts by a rough, heavy hand on his left shoulder.

"Ye know he means well."

Hiccup looked up at Gobber's kind, craggy toothed smile.

"Why does 'meaning well' usually involve keeping me from doing anything?"

Deadpan: "Spatula Trap."

"That was on uneven ground!" Hiccup insisted. "If I'd had a good base, that Monstrous Nightmare would have gone into the ocean, not Spitelout's house!"

Unwilling to restart an old argument, Gobber waved the tongs attached to his left arm.

"Hiccup, take it from me: sailing through a storm is no fun. Sailing through a storm with only one real leg is even less fun. All the problems ye've had so far will come back on a pitching deck, and the sheep won't help."

"I should be learning these things, then." Hiccup said, now having other concerns alongside shopping in Skall.

"And ye will, but ye have to be patient. Yer old man has things on his mind and ye're one of 'em. Don' worry; he's not just goin' to forget how much things changed."

Hiccup heard his father's rich voice echo from below and looked down to see the sails on the flagship unfurl. The longship began to pull away from the dock, and the crews of the other ships rushed to their own vessels' ropes.

"So just wait then?"

"That's all I'm sayin'."

"All right," Hiccup looked down. "And how long did Dad tell you to hold me in the air?"

"He didn't; I just thought I might do it 'till all the ships have set out." Gobber replied serenely.

"Very foresighted of you," Hiccup muttered. He looked over at Toothless. "I don't suppose you'd care to help?"

Toothless rose to his haunches, sat back, and huffed.

"…guess not."

It was actually a rather pretty day. The wide gap in the ice sparkled in competition with the snow, looking not unlike a river cutting through a white plain. Stoick's ship left the bay first, moving at a sedate pace past the carved light towers that jutted out of the ice. The second one followed closely, and the other two hadn't quite caught up, but negotiating the ice would close things up, Hiccup guessed.

Dangling from Gobber's hand, he watched his last hope sail away.

* * *

Now, in those days, the oldest of the community—no longer able to wield swords, shovels, or hoes, or sometimes even lifting them—were given different responsibilities from those of younger (i.e., physically sound) people. These elders were entrusted with the guardianship of traditions, the dispensation of wisdom, the education of the village's children, and the counsel of rulers.

This was a lot of pressure for these old farts; many of them hadn't done anything that distinguished but farm or fish. The first time anybody had told them that they possessed great wisdom (and were sober while doing so) was when the villagers showed up on their birthday and started asking odd questions like: "I can't remember what the proper offering to Thor is. Would bread do or does he prefer beef?"

"How the hell should I know?" an old person would say.

"Because you're an elder," the villagers would reply.

"I am? Oh crap."

For the most part, these elders had no idea why their advice was suddenly in such high demand. Many secretly believed that it was all just an overreaction to the uncommon event of someone whose lifespan actually exceeded that of their candlestick. Bewildered old people muddled along, threw out random creeds or mottos, confirmed what the local chief had already decided on, and prayed nothing bad would happen. This style would later be adopted by members of what would become middle management.

There were, of course, elders who had gained wisdom through vast experience and were perfectly suited to preside over festivals and give advice to the young. They also stood up in the councils of the rulers to argue for or against an act and sometimes lost their heads for it (the less worthy elders lost more heads, though; lords considered consistently bad advice less tolerable than good counsel, even if the latter was displeasing).

Gothi was an excellent elder. In her youth, she'd taken her share of dragon heads and enjoyed spearfishing. She still acted as a midwife, and had delivered half of the village, including Hiccup. She officiated the feasts and holidays marking the years and honoring the gods, supervised the teaching of the village children and (formerly) chose the graduates of the dragon training classes. Another duty was keeping the Archive, where the village deposited deeds, marriage contracts, and other papers and trinkets.

Toothless mewled in dismay at the sight of the stairs leading up to Gothi's house. Narrows steps attached to a sturdy beam led up to a platform, from which one mounted another set of stairs going up to the long deck which looked over the sea and the islands that towered over the water. Hiccup didn't look too pleased at the sight of the stairs himself, but for different reasons. He dismounted and beckoned for the dragon to follow him, offering a comforting smile that sort of worked, before beginning a careful ascent.

The house—which had been the residence of most of Berk's chief elders—stood atop a disturbingly narrow protrusion of rock attached to the side of the mountain around which the village had clustered itself. Built with materials salvaged from a beached ship and decorated with shields, a wind chime made of bones, and a bird house nailed to the wall just above the awning over the front door, it was one of the few houses that had never been touched by dragon raids. It was far from the barns and fields where Berk's livestock dwelled and had no defense works near it. With no food to take and nothing firing on them, the dragons ignored the house, turning it into a half-decent refuge for the children that Gothi mentored.

Reaching the deck, Hiccup glanced at a walkway that led to another set of stairs, his real destination today but courtesy and village protocol required him to pay respects to Gothi. Toothless nervously climbed up behind him, glancing over the edge as they made their way to the door. Hiccup knocked and after a few moments, the stooped, gnarled form of the elder opened the door and looked at him blinkingly. A Terrible Terror, the most conveniently sized dragon types, gave a questioning chirp from her shoulder.

Hiccup had never really been comfortable around Gothi. They'd rarely spoken and he always had the feeling that he was being carefully observed whenever she was around. After the disastrous final test the previous summer, some had openly questioned her judgment and Hiccup was surprised to learn that she had stood by her decision on him as the first viking warrior of his generation. When he had brought most of the village's army back safely, her critics vanished, but he'd never stopped wondering if perhaps her opinion of him had been colored by the experience.

"Good morning, Elder," Hiccup began. "I'm here to look at Pitt the Inquisitive's diary."

"For the manual?" Gothi asked in a croaking voice. Before he could answer, she continued: "Well, high time you came. We're approaching our first year with these critters and all that book talks about is killing them."

"That's all they were interested in when they wrote it." Hiccup said matter of factly.

She smiled at him and touched his arm. "Well, now we know better, don't we?"

For a moment Hiccup wasn't sure what to say, but Gothi's eyes went to the ground and she frowned.

"How is your leg faring, child?"

"Huh?" Hiccup looked down at the false foot. "It's…okay. I'm better on it now."

Gothi shook her head. "They went and operated on it before I could take a look. Bothered me ever since." She gave the prosthetic another look. "Come by if it bothers you any. I know some old remedies for these things."

"Thank you."

"Now, Pitt's notes are near the back, in a box on the third shelf up. There's a fireplace with plenty of logs and some candles; they'll be right there when you enter, can't miss them."

"Thanks, Elder." Hiccup turned to go.

"If you get hungry come back here, I'm making biscuits and don't mind company," she called after him.

He waved back and limped up the stairs, Toothless close behind. Reaching the porch that held Gothi's small garden, he turned to his right to step onto the first plank of a rope-suspended bridge, leading into an opening in the mountain face, where a heavy door that just outsized Stoick the Vast waited. Dragon and boy moved carefully across the bridge, Hiccup gripping the rope tightly against a frightening fall. Then they both crowded into the alcove that held the door. Hiccup pulled out the key and turned the lock. He grabbed the handle and with a massive effort managed to push it open enough for them to slip through.

The light that came through the door's opening revealed a fireplace set into the wall and a pile of wood by its side. Hiccup tossed a few logs in and had Toothless light them, then he closed the door securely and stood by the new fire happily, rubbing his arms. The room was cold.

The light from the fire revealed a large room, its walls gouged with carved shelves bearing dozens of books and boxes, all grimy with dust and many decorated with cobwebs. The hinged boxes, marked with paint, held individual related papers or collections of records. Papers shared space with assorted knick-knacks that the vikings and Hiccup's family had gathered over the centuries: a Roman statue; a few swords of little use except as reminders of glorious battles in which they were taken; Theo the Bald's only hairpiece; a sail depicting the god Thor kicking the ass of Hercules with which Hiccup's ancestors had taunted the Greeks; and the crushed skull of Berock the Foresightless, who had hoped to be remembered as "Berock the High-Flying" and failed—epically.

Close to the fireplace was a wooden table and chairs. Four candles, only half melted, sat on the table. Hiccup picked one up, lit it from the fire, and moved deeper into the Archive chambers while Toothless took the opportunity to warm up the rock he stood on with fiery breath. The dragon was about to curl his tail around himself when he heard something in the next chamber fall over. In an instant he jumped to his feet and ran to the doorway.

"It's all right," Hiccup sounded strained. He had placed the candle on a shelf above the one he wanted, having discovered that the desired box was half as big as himself. The crash Toothless had heard was the box being pulled from its shelf and falling to the floor, as boxes are wont to do when pulled down by people who weigh perhaps ninety-eight pounds soaking wet.

The next eight minutes were spent pulling the box over to the table. There he lifted the dusty lid and began pulling out string-bound books and pinned papers while Toothless returned to his still warm patch of rock. Placing the candle at a decent place, Hiccup produced a notebook and his pencil from his coat and opened up a book, which turned out to be one of the first dragon manuals Berk had used. A quick look confirmed that the book only talked about the dragons Pitt the Inquisitive and his people had faced: the Nadder, Zippleback, Gronkle, Terrible Terror, Monstrous Nightmare, and the Night Fury. It had little information beyond what was obvious to eyewitnesses and inaccurate drawings: Pitt's depiction of the Nadder gave the creature tiny forearms and the Monstrous Nightmare was given a fatter jaw. The Night Fury's section was the only entry that had barely changed, in that the latest manual still had little else in it beyond a warning that said, basically: "RUN, STUPID!"

Putting aside the book, Hiccup turned to a stack of notes that Pitt had gathered after his first manual had proved less than helpful. These had more promise than the books, at any rate.

It was an hour and several pages later that he found it. His coat was gathered around his shoulders, his right foot rested on the table's corner, and Toothless was snoring softly by the fireplace. Hiccup placed a sheet down on the table and began reading a fresh set of notes. He stopped at the bottom of the page, blinked, and began reading it again. His foot came down and he sat forward in his chair as he reread the page a third time. Then he turned it to the back and followed the words intensely. He lifted his head and stared into space for a few minutes. Then a smile slowly cut across his face, and he let loose a sudden laugh.

"_That's it!_"

Toothless started, lifting his head in surprise and perking his ears. He turned his eyes to Hiccup, whose grin had spread even further and now jumped to his feet, almost falling because of his leg.

"That's it! This is it!"

Hiccup turned to his dragon, who sat up nervously when he saw the gleam in Hiccup's eyes.

"Toothless!" Hiccup stabbed his finger towards the paper in his hand. "This. Is. IT!" Then he burst into laughter.

The dragon watched him warily, a feeling of bewilderment washing over him. Hiccup had always struck him as the most sensible and smartest of the humans around him; this was something he'd expect the other vikings to do. Poor Toothless, of course, had no idea why the villagers still twitched when Hiccup walked by with tools; or that he'd only been allowed to handle saws again the previous spring; or that it was Hiccup's prototype Rapid-Fire Catapult that nearly gave two Gronkles and a Monstrous Nightmare heart failure while in flight (dragons and device, that is).

All Toothless knew was that this sudden cheer was scary and that he probably should be afraid.

He was right.

* * *

Author's Note: the design for Gothi's house and the the dragon descriptions are taken from The Official Art Book for How to Train Your Dragon, in which you can find concepts for the scenery, contraptions, dragons and characters, including a surprisingly badass looking version of Hiccup.

I've gotten some reviews in which people gave some fair critiques and asked some questions. I am going to answer some of them here:

**.4ever2010**: The story is set sometime in March, perhaps April, after the events of the previous summer which I hold happened in August. I am admittedly weak in my knowledge of viking calanders and have no idea what names they had for months.

I think Astrid believes they're dating, but contact has been sparse over the winter months, and Hiccup's self-esteem hasn't really recovered enough for him to be really confident about the relationship.

**The New Leo**: Thanks for noticing the commas. I'm trying to avoid overuse starting now.

**Miko Maleficus**: Thank you, but I was a little shocked to see that you consider mine the only good one in this particular section. I recommend the works of Backroads and Enchantable, and I am sure I am missing a few others. There is also a story—the name of which, I'm sorry to say, I've forgotten—in which Hiccup is kidnapped by Norman raiders and forced to try and train their captured dragons. If anybody knows what this story is titled, please tell me via review.

**Avatarmirai and Opaul**: I think I may have done it again with the descriptions. Please bear with me; I'm not entirely sure what really needs it and what doesn't.

**GhibliGirl91**: I think I just forgot they were supposed to be 14. In this story, Astrid is about a year older than Hiccup as well as being faster, stronger, and possessing fractionally better eyesight.

**To All**: Thank you very much for your reviews. I hope this chapter doesn't prove too daunting and that you folks will stay with me, because things will start getting a little more serious soon.

But not too serious…


	3. Chapter 3

**THE GREAT QUEST**

By Red Star

Chapter 3

Pitt the Inquisitive was the son of Hiccup the Humble, also known as Hiccup I, of the noble Haddocks. It was this Hiccup—the first to hold this name—who had felt obliged to remove himself, his family, and his vassels from the mainland to take up residence on the island of Berk.

Pitt was drifting through his teens then, and had been considered something of an oddity: quiet, with a penchant for drawing and observing the island's wildlife. He also had a mild streak of inventiveness in him—not as pronounced as in his descendent—that led him to build a number of cranes on Berk's cliffs with which to move the flow of lumber, tools, and baggage from the ships at anchor in the bay. This contribution and his skill with a sword made his tribesmen forgive his eccentricities.

As a matter of course, Berk was settled beginning in the first days of that summer. Working fast, the colonists managed to log half of the shelf on which the village would sit and built a series of sturdy, if undistinguished, shelters to get through the winter. In the second month of the settlement, Hiccup the Humble decided that things were ready for his sheep herds to be moved to his new holding. They arrived mostly intact, to the great pleasure of the settlers, who looked forward to a winter with warm woolen clothing and mutton with their bread and fish.

Then, wouldn't you know it, the dragons dropped by.

After the remnants of the herds had been collected, their cheerfully burning shelters were extinguished, and everybody had joined in a rousing chorus of "the _hell_ just happened", the villagers met with their chief to figure out what to do next. Several hearty vikings wanted to find the dragons and attack their nest immediately. Another group proposed heading back to the mainland for the winter, mustering a stronger host, and destroying the nest come the next summer. One elder suggested that a subcommittee be formed to study the veracity of digging big tunnels in the ground and simply living there. Hiccup I made him stand in a corner and think about what he'd done.

Finally, the chief decided that the village would simply rebuild and he appointed his son to research the dragons and prepare his tribe for their war on the beasts. Pitt was chosen both for his studiousness and the fact that he wasn't in the room at the time.

The young viking started out with his sketches, drawing some dragons from memory and interviewing villagers for others he didn't really see. Then he accompanied his father to Skall, where he began asking questions around the docks. Eventually, he was led to an old man who had faced every hazard the northern seas could think up and a few it had borrowed from other oceans.

Trop the Tailed (don't ask) informed Pitt that Berk sat astride a sea route that was considered only somewhat safe. When ships saw dragons, for the most part it was at a distance and the worst that would happen would be a flyover, causing severe injuries to the hands by a sudden grab for weapons. In fact, the only ships that were attacked by dragons tended to be the rare livestock carrier and occasional longships returning from raids.

As Pitt recorded, Trop laughed and said this:

"Tis' not uncommon for the raiders to open their chests on calm seas and take stock o' their booty, young master. They plan for its sharing and trade, and far from land and only with trusted men about them, tis' a good place as any. But these fellows weren't paying attention around Berk and they lost their prizes, though not everything; and they should be grateful!"

"What was lost?" Pitt asked.

"Oh, treasures from the south. Coins, rings, jewels; these are gold things I'm speaking of, y'see. When there's just a few of 'em in your catch, the dragons don't take notice, but if there's a whole heap in a chest, they'll come right at ye, especially the Nadders."

"They attack the ships? No provocation?"

Trop didn't know what provocation meant, but had shrugged and continued:

"Well, to be truthful, 'attack's a mighty strong word. Mostly the beasties will just come by and snatch the box and fly off. I only heard o' two ships that they actually sank."

"And they only take the gold?"

"Aye. I think they fancy the shiny things, y'see."

"What do they do with it all?"

Trop shrugged: "I reckon they keep it somewhere; mebbe line their nests with it. I don't know. Don't care much either; I lived this long because I don't do fool things like mess with fire-breathin' beasts and their dens."

"How many ships have they plundered in this manner?"

"Beats me, young master; I've been on three o' those boats meself. The stories have made the rounds since 'fore I was born. Can't be much less than a hundred, I'd wager."

* * *

In those days, the battle of the sexes had not yet really been engaged; this was mostly because the lot of both men and women were such that the privileges of being male had all the advantages offered to someone with new boots who had stepped into a puddle of liquefied mud instead of a fresh cow chip. In those simpler times, the sexes each had their own jobs: men tended the fields, went off to war, chased the damned pigs that had escaped again, depressed their sons by teaching him the ways of his life, moved the furniture, and ran the government; women made and mended clothing, occasionally caused wars, turned the damned pigs into sausage to show them who was boss, taught their daughters how to snag rich men, made their husbands move the furniture, and generously allowed men to believe they ran the government.

There was little difference on Berk, save that their women fought like the men, drank like men, and some even shaved like men. Tradition still gave the men and womenfolk assigned roles though, and one of those was that the females of the household often had charge of crafting and mending the clothing. As women are wont to do with this particular chore, they did their work in groups, accompanying the movement of needles with gossip and innuendo, punctuated by high-pitched giggles. The latter was particularly frightening, coming from vikings.

"Wh—how the hell'd he do _this_?"

Astrid Hofferson looked up from her coat to see Ruffnut holding a shirt aloft, a plain look of consternation on her face. The bottom was frayed, with small strips of blue-dyed wool sadly drooping from the edge. A few holes dotted the back, some big enough to poke a finger through.

"Wow—good question."

Ruffnut scowled and gathered it in her fists angrily.

"Jerk; just because he sews himself to his clothing whenever he tries to do it himself, he thinks he can do whatever he wants and I'll fix it for him! Like hell!" she tossed the shirt onto the floor and dug into the bag holding her other work.

Astrid reached for the shirt as Ruffnut pulled out a heavy brown blanket. Holding it up, she speculatively examined the garment.

"Hey, Ruff? This shirt…"

"Totally ruined. And he'll just have to deal with it; it's not like these things grow on trees, either. No, they grow on sheep—that can bite. I almost lost half a finger to that little fuzzball."

Astrid lowered the shirt to look at her friend with a raised eyebrow.

"Is that the sheep I saw you trying to feed to Run-Tun?"

Ruffnut rolled her eyes and replied: "Payback's a bitch—to get; figures I'd get the Zippleback that doesn't like sheep."

Of course, Run-Tun, like other Zipplebacks, tended to prefer fish for a meal rather than entire sheep. Each head could have their own fish, but give them food in a single piece and the two heads would snap at each other. Explaining that both of the heads shared a stomach did little good, although they had begun to understand the impropriety of trying to share beds with the humans after a few chats.

"Anyway, this shirt…"

"If he wants it, he can fix it."

"…isn't it yours?"

Ruffnut looked up from trying to thread a bone needle and looked at the shirt.

"So it is."

"…your brother wears your shirts?"

"Yeah; why not?" was her answer, with a blank look of nonchalance.

Why not, indeed; Astrid could remember times in which she noticed the twins were wearing each other's helmets—or maybe she never really had known which helmet belonged to whom.

Astrid's room was a very viking affair: her bed was a long flat construction, with a thin mattress stuffed with wool and covered by a few blankets; a heavy chest held her clothing and what accessories she possessed. The most distinctive thing she kept in her room were the weapons she'd mounted on her walls. Swords, daggers, a few bolos, and one battle-scythe hung on nails around the breadth of the room. Mounted over her bed, within easy reach, was a doubled-bladed battle axe: her favorite weapon.

Seated on her bed, Astrid tossed the shirt aside, picked up the coat and began working her needle through the wool again. She'd gotten the raw wool in the fall, had it spun and dyed over the winter, and had been working on the garment ever since.

"Is Tuffnut still doing all that muttering?" she asked.

"Nah; I beaned him with a log last night and he finally shut up."

"What was all that about anyway?"

"I think it was something Hiccup said to him."

"Ah," Hiccup had that effect sometimes. Either his enthusiastic inventiveness or his well-honed sarcasm could leave someone trying to retrace their steps in a conversation with him.

Ruffnut had worked the blanket over her legs, and was stitching it with black thread. Astrid was concentrating on her work and only glanced up when she was pulling her thread taught. She paused.

"What's that?"

"What's what?"

"That stitching," Astrid gestured to the familiar looking lines of black on the blanket. "Those look like runes."

"They are," Ruffnut replied and turned the blanket around to hold it up. In heavy black thread was an unfinished declaration: "I SUC—"

Astrid raised an eyebrow, "Tuffnut's?"

"Tuffnut's," Ruffnut replied affirmatively.

"What'll keep him from putting that on your bed?"

"I already finished mine," Ruffnut pulled out another blanket that would have looked just like the one she was working on, except for the proclamation that "RUFFNUT RULES".

"Nice," Astrid said, admiring her friend's grasp of fraternally antagonistic tactics. Tuffnut's retaliation would be interesting to see.

She turned back to her work and found she had but one more seam to make before it was ready to wear. It was completed eagerly and the thread snapped and tied off in a hasty flourish. Then she stood up and slipped the coat on over her head.

"What do you think?" she asked, holding out her arms and making a quick spin.

Ruffnut looked up and pursed her lips in the manner of teenage girls making a judgment. Finally, she said: "Nice, but what's with the color?"

The coat was woolen, lined with the fur pelt of an elk Astrid's father, Kramp the Cheerful, had lugged back from a winter hunt, and dyed a green that evoked visions of resurrected trees in springtime.

"I thought I'd go with something different," Astrid replied in a casual tone that had seen obvious practice.

"Suuuure…"

Astrid smoothly plucked her axe from the wall and jabbed the blades in Ruffnut's direction.

"Careful," she warned.

The other girl rolled her eyes and continued her act of vandalizing embroidery. Whatever else there could be said about the twins, they tended to be scornful of obvious dangers, preferring such concerns to be made secondary by their private competition.

Astrid withdrew her weapon, flipping it in her hand as she looked around at her weapons collection thoughtfully. Leaning the axe against a wall, she pulled a knife from its sheath, examined it for a moment, and then replaced it. Her hand went thoughtfully to another, longer dagger with a black leather sheath, which she took down and gave a brief shake, causing the blade to partially emerge. What she saw seemed to please her because she gave a small smirk like the kind she had at her first (and last) archery lesson and gave the dagger another shake, making it sheathe itself. She then went over to her trunk and opened it to retrieve a red sash that she wrapped tightly around her waist. The dagger was slipped into the sash and she reached for her axe.

"I'm going out," she declared. Ruffnut looked up from the top of her runic "K".

"For what?"

"I need some things sharpened; Mom and Dad took my flint on their hunt, so I'll have to use one at the smithy," Astrid hoped she put the right amount of exasperated-teenage-girl-tone in her voice.

"Oh, suurrrrre," Ruffnut said with a marvelously angled smirk.

"What?" maybe snappishness would avert the looming embarrassment, "Blades are supposed to be sharp; you can't use a sword as a club. I know: Mom tried it once and said it takes forever to do anything."

"Right, right, whatever," the other girl had already returned to her work. There were times when the twins had the attention spans of puppies who had just finished off a bucket of molasses.

Astrid turned and had just put down the curtain that separated her room from the large communal room when Ruffnut sang out: "Say hi to Hiccup for me."

She stopped in the middle of the room, heaved a sigh, and continued over to the door.

Outside, the snow had been cleared in front of her house and on the path that led to the square where the village smithy stood. She bent her steps in that direction, waving to a neighbor and nimbly dodging an arguing squadron of Terrors that were flapping in the general direction of one of the dens built the previous summer. A dark blue Nadder strutted past, its horned snout raised and sniffing in the air. Astrid ignored it. Nadders were curious dragons; bring one into a house and it tended to sniff everywhere and everything. Freya help you if you got one that knew how to open jars (and this was eerily frequent). This one was obviously sniffing out someone's recipe.

Pillars of smoke drifted from the smithy's chimney, a sign of the village's smiths at work. Or at lunch; Astrid remembered walking in once to find Gobber holding something in the hearth with his tongs-prosthetic. Hiccup had been sitting peacefully nearby and munching on two darkened pieces of bread with what looked and smelled like goat cheese squished between them.

She paused before the door to straighten out her coat, then gripped the handle and swung it inside. Stepping in, she almost tripped over Toothless's tail. The dragon turned its head to warble a greeting and then turned back to the activity deeper within.

A worried looking Fishlegs was standing beside the gaping jaw of Ajax, his Gronkle. From her vantage point, Astrid couldn't see Hiccup at first, but then she heard a voice that dreaded what else puberty had in store for it.

"Yeah, I see it: its black, shaped like an arrowhead," he paused for a few seconds, "It's wedged pretty good. Have to use a—"

"Hi, Astrid," Fishlegs said, having noticed her.

There was a mixture of a wet smack and a dull knock from Ajax's mouth, followed by a draconic whimper and a hiss. Looking embarrassed, Fishlegs offered a meaty hand, which soon clasped around a thin, freckled one. Hiccup appeared from behind the dragon's nose, rubbing his head, and giving her a sheepish smile.

"Hello, Hiccup," she said with a teasing smirk.

"Hi," he answered faintly. He still looked unsteady, but he politely removed his hand from Fishleg's grip, then reached down and pulled out a carefully cut log from Ajax's mouth. The Gronkle gave a contented purr and smacked its lips.

"Rest a bit, okay, Ajax? We'll get to it in a few minutes and then you can go home," Hiccup said soothingly with a few friendly rubs on the dragon's neck. Then he turned to Astrid.

"What's up?"

"My parents took my flint on their hunt," she said in a carefully casual tone, "and I need this sharpened." She patted the dagger at her waist.

"What about the axe?"

"This?" she hefted it. She was a little surprised at the question. "I thought I'd get in a little throwing practice after I'm done here."

In truth, Astrid just had a habit of carrying it around, much like a toddler would a favored stuffed toy—granted, this particular toy could crack open skulls like eggs and send brain matter fifteen yards away, but the idea was similar.

"Can I take a look?" he asked, opening a hand towards her.

Astrid hesitated, then hefted the weapon and handed it to him. Hiccup took it in one hand, which dropped several inches from the weight. With a slightly strained look he inspected the axe, gripping the blade with three fingers and giving it a tug, then lifting the whole thing up to examine the handle shaft. After a moment's contemplation, he extended it back to Astrid.

"Have you been using it a lot?"

"She has a name, you know."

"No, I didn't," it was common for vikings to name their weapons; living in medieval Scandinavia did that to you, "and what have you called this fine lady?"

Astrid lifted her axe above her head so that it caught the light of the hearth's fire and the candles, and then proclaimed: "Emascula, Instrument of Preemptive Vengeance."

"Wow, really…fitting," Hiccup said with a weak smile. Beside Ajax, Fishlegs casually crossed his legs.

"But, to answer your question: just for practice, when I can get to a decent tree," which was hard in wintertime Berk. Just walking to her favorite practice spot would have taken all day, and she had chores around home to think of.

"Do you always do the same thing? Throw it at a tree, pull it out, and repeat?"

"Yeah; why?"

Hiccup pointed at Emascula. "The head's a little loose; you have to look for it, but it shifts about an eleventh of an inch when the handle is moved."

Astrid blinked and looked at her axe, "Really."

"Yeah," he dared to step a little closer and tapped the head, "Normally, I'd just tighten the bolts, but you also have some hairline cracks down the shaft here," he drew his surprisingly callused finger across the handle , stopping where Astrid could dimly see jagged black lines that she was fairly certain hadn't been there before. Cracks had appeared between some of the leather straps that made up the grip, and there was a longer one further down.

Astrid mentally cussed herself out. Berk was hard on everything that called it home, and that included the tools. The trees she practiced on were survivors, so it took some strength to retrieve her axe; all that constant embedding and wrenching took a toll.

The vikings of Berk knew never to take a chance with their arms: they had to be ready at any second, and besides which the dragons had done enough breaking on their own without any help.

She gripped the axe with both hands, "What should I do?"

"Well…" Hiccup was regarding the axe unhappily, for some reason, "I could give you a new handle. It'll take some time but you'd start out fresh. I'll even figure out something to make it more durable if you want to keep cutting up trees."

"Why don't you just do that?"

Hiccup started and Astrid didn't, but they both turned to look at Fishlegs who was rubbing Ajax's nose.

"Why don't you just use it for chopping wood until the handle breaks or whatever? That's the kind of thing my dad always does with his stuff: use it in something harmless until it falls apart," he paused thoughtfully, "Well, not that he should. Have you ever tried to butter a piece of bread with a bastard sword?"

"She's not meant to chop wood," Astrid and Hiccup snapped in unison.

Fishlegs held up his hands and stepped back, tripping over Ajax who had already retreated.

"Anyway," Astrid said, the sharpness in her tone fading, "That sounds good, Hiccup." She pulled the dagger from her sash and passed both the weapons to the blacksmith's apprentice, who promptly staggered with them to a worktable.

"It'll be a few days," he said in a labored voice; he deposited the burden onto a clear space and turned around with a happy sigh, "I'm going to take Toothless out tomorrow, and I have to help Gobber around the ring the day after. But it shouldn't take any longer than that."

"That's okay; less temptation," Astrid said with an eye-roll, "Mom and Dad left me with the pest while they're gone. Apparently, threats involving battle-axes and the many ways in which it can be used are 'bad' disciplinary tools. They spoil that girl."

"You can go too far with that," Hiccup warned her, "When I was little—okay, littl_er_," he sighed when Fishlegs and Astrid stared at him, "my dad used to be on my ass about everything: 'Hiccup, stay away from that cabinet', 'If I've told you once, I've told you a thousand times, stay off the catapult', 'We are going to talk later, son, but right now you need to hang on', 'Dammit, Hiccup, I told you to stay out of that cabinet', 'See, this is why I don't let you hold more than one hammer'. You'd think I was some puppy that hadn't been housebroken yet."

There was silence for a moment.

"Right. Soooo, what's wrong with Ajax?" Astrid asked, trying to change the conversation.

"He chewed some granite up and got a piece stuck in his teeth," Fishlegs patted his Gronkle on the head, "I found him gnawing on a big rock trying to dislodge it. I didn't know what else to do, so here we are."

Hiccup hobbled through a doorway, reappearing with an awl and a small pair of tongs. He picked up the small log on his way to the dragon, beside whom he lowered to his knees with a grunt.

"Okay, Ajax, I just need you to open wide again," Hiccup instructed in a cheerful tone that would later be aped by syringe-wielding pediatricians. The Gronkle blinked hesitantly, and then opened its mouth. The log was carefully placed on end within the jaws, providing a brace for Hiccup to safely reach into the maw.

It was a warming show of trust, but Astrid was at least partly used to it. When the dragons had migrated to Berk, the dragons had surprised the vikings with their deference and attention to both Toothless and Hiccup. At the village feast that had followed the last piece of their victory—Hiccup's awakening—the dragons had refused to eat until Toothless had plunged his head into a pile of fish, and they were still uneasy until Hiccup had been seated with a rack of lamb. Fishlegs theorized that because Toothless had been the dragon that had destroyed the Red Death, he was seen as the new leader of the den. Fishlegs also believed that the dragons regarded Hiccup as an extension of Toothless, therefore they treated him with the same reverence.

Hiccup took up the awl and began probing at a spot in the back half of the lower jaw—where the piece of granite was stuck, she supposed.

"Well, I think it's loose enough," Hiccup commented. He reached beside himself for the small tongs, discarding the awl as he did so. "Should be able to…" Hiccup's arm twitched, and he paused.

"Should be able to…"

Another twitch.

"…to…"

Twitch number three.

His other arm went in.

"…to…"

His torso jerked backwards. Fishlegs was looking even more worried and Ajax gave a whining sigh.

Astrid rolled her eyes, untied her sash, and took off her coat. She stepped beside Hiccup and gently pulled him up by the shoulder. Then she pulled the tongs from his hand and pressed her things into Hiccup's surprised grasp.

"New coat; don't want it dirty yet," she said, and then she knelt by the Gronkle's open mouth.

Gronkles have a lot of large, hard, sharp teeth, and it took a moment for her to adjust her eyes and spot the offending rock. She reached over and fastened the tongs onto the granite, gave an experimental tug, then a mighty yank upwards, triggering a surprised yip from Ajax. In a swift motion she pulled away the log and stood up, smiling benevolently down at the Gronkle.

"Wow, thanks, Astrid," Fishlegs accepted the offered rock and pocketed it.

She shrugged. "Hiccup got it started; and he knew what to use."

"Well, I am an apprentice," Hiccup said wryly, "I have a lot of experience being the connection between tools and the people who can actually use them."

Astrid smiled and reached for her coat. Fishlegs and Ajax made their way outside, Toothless slithering past them towards Hiccup. As she shook the coat out and put her right arm into a sleeve, Hiccup looked at her thoughtfully.

"Is that a new coat?"

"Yeah," Astrid beckoned for the sash, "Just finished it today; I told you just a minute ago, remember?"

"Oh, yeah," he replied distractedly while handing the garment over. "It's different, isn't it?"

"The color," Astrid cinched the sash tightly, "That's different."

"It's nice," he said distantly.

"Thank you."

Awkward silence fell like a fat lemming.

"So, I, uh, hear you're having a birthday coming up soon," Hiccup tried.

"Yeah, the big one-six," Astrid replied, "Very important. Lots of things to do."

"Harll's coming?"

"He says he's going to unveil something called 'rock music'," she shrugged at Hiccup's quizzical look, "Don't ask me; I only invited him so he'd shut up. He still plays a mean guitar, though."

"I know; he used to live down the hill from us."

"'Used to'?"

Hiccup shrugged, "Dragons."

Astrid nodded and then asked: "You _are_ coming, right?"

The boy blinked and then gave a wide, nervous smile, "Of course! Wouldn't miss it!"

His face had taken on a look that gave Astrid pause; she recalled that Hiccup had adopted the same expression whenever he was trying to hide his attempts to "help" the village. She still woke up sweating from dreams that involved his attempts to improve their water wagon.

"What are you planning?"

"Huh? Nothing!" he waved his hands in denial. Another bad sign; during one raid, she'd seen him do that when the chief was questioning him. Stoick had picked his son up in one hand and stepped into the alley which Hiccup had been hiding in. He'd come back out a moment later, visibly shaken, and promptly shoved his son into the smithy, barring the door after he did so. This needed handling, _now_.

"Listen," she said, easily sliding an arm around Hiccup's shoulders, "Just come to the Mead Hall and have fun, okay? Don't go nuts because somebody else is inventing things for a change."

"Of course not," Hiccup grinned nervously at her, "Let Harll do what he wants. I might not even notice him: too busy partying. I can be a real party animal, you know."

"Really," Astrid said in a wondering tone.

"Well, my dad is one, so I probably inherited the trait from him," he caught the look on Astrid's face, "Well, I've got to have _something_ besides his hair and eyes, right?"

"Sure, sure," she said in a placating tone. Astrid walked to the door, saying, "I should start home; the pest will be home soon and I'll have to get a start on dinner," she paused with her hand on the handle, "You said you're going out tomorrow?"

"Yeah, with Toothless; poor guy's getting antsy these days."

At Hiccup's feet, Toothless began to snore softly.

"How long will you be?"

"All day," Hiccup began to prod the Nightfury softly, "Have to really work out the nervous energy, _don't we_, Toothless?"

One large green eye opened long enough to discern Hiccup was not within the jaws of some hellish beast and thus did not require immediate rescue, then shut again.

The two vikings stared at the dragon.

"He just ate," Hiccup explained.

"Right, sure," Astrid replied, "I have to be going. See you later."

"See ya."

"And the party?"

"Of course."

* * *

The sun had not yet risen and most of the village was still asleep when Hiccup awoke the next morning. He didn't want to answer any questions; or worse, have somebody invite themselves along on this trip. This would be his secret triumph, to be revealed only at the day of his intended's adulthood.

The first thing to do was to hook up Toothless's saddle and false winglet. This was done while the dragon breakfasted on a basket of trout; Hiccup himself had eaten a few pieces of black bread with goat butter.

After he'd checked all the straps and lines, he pulled out a few small saddlebags and clipped them to the saddle where it covered Toothless's lower neck. It was an idea he'd come up with during the day of forced immobility when that rock had jammed his false leg, a means by which he could make long journeys beyond Berk. He could take food, clothing, and weapons with him…and bring things back.

The vikings of Berk had learned to be careful with their brighter belongings. Dragons chased the lights reflected from especially shiny buckles, tools, helmets, and blades, and sometimes contrived to steal them for the nests set up around the village and the hatchery that had been created in the old dragon fighting ring. Many gave up the stolen metals as unviking-like anyway, but for others it seemed that all that was needed was a scolding tone and a willingness to reach into the nest and reclaim their belongings. Hiccup believed the dragons were accustomed to having their little "treasures" passed around in a musical-chairs game of theft or sharing.

Or perhaps they had never had any treasure at all.

He remembered a lot of things from the first time he had been to the dragon's den: fear for himself and what was possibly his first real (human) friend and ally; confusion over Toothless's strange behavior; the hundreds of dragons ensconced in tight corners and niches, clutching close to their eggs; and the horror of the Red Death's revelation.

What he did not remember was any piles of gold, piled up in nests or nestled among stones.

The dragons _had_ been raiding ships for several generations: Pitt the Inquisitive had been definite on that. Hundreds of ships had lost several king's ransoms worth of gold to the fog enshrouded den. But where was the gold.

It seemed perfectly obvious to Hiccup: the gold had been tribute, paid to the Red Death for the lining of _its_ nest, just as the dragons had been forced to hunt beyond their needs to feed the unholy beast. Odin knew how much gold had been cast down into the Red Death's nest, never to be seen again.

But, of course, the Red Death had itself met its demise; meaning that there was a veritable sea of treasure waiting within the vast mountain that had held the den.

And Hiccup was certain that among it would be his Goal, the subject of his Quest: the perfect gift to upstage Snotlout, win Astrid's heart, and ensure the future of the House of Haddock (granted their children would probably be taller and significantly stronger than him by the age of six; Hiccup had made his peace with this long ago). Not only that, but in one stroke Berk would become one of the wealthiest fiefdoms in the kingdom, and he would be remembered with a style to his name: perhaps "Hiccup the Golden" or "Hiccup the Giver". He'd even settle for "Hiccup the Surprisingly Useful".

He donned his harness, pulled on his coat and a furry hat, and gave a little pat on Toothless's head.

"C'mon, buddy."

The door was opened, admitting a lazy flow of coldness. Toothless trotted outside, lifting his flat snout and inhaling the smells of a village at rest, while Hiccup shut the entrance to his house. The air had that clean crispiness that comes with cold weather, spiced by the scent of slumbering fires, persevering trees, and the Gronkle that buzzed dozily by after rolling in something that may or may not have had rodent origins.

The two looked out over the dark village for a moment, and then Hiccup turned to Toothless and climbed into the saddle. The dragon immediately crawled to a knoll beside the walkway, where they often took off from when just leaving the house.

Two massive black wings stretched out, preparing the muscles for flight and testing the wind, which Toothless found agreeable.

The viking leaned down beside his friend's ear and said, "You know where to go, and what to do, right?"

The dragon paused and then bobbed its head in acknowledgement.

"All right then," he rubbed Toothless's neck, "This is for Astrid."

With one mighty stroke of the wings, they were airborne, flying towards the place of their greatest and their next victory.

Or the scene of disaster. Place your bets.

* * *

Author's Notes: Happy Release Day!

I cannot apologize enough for the lateness of this chapter. I freely admit to laziness on my part, as well as certain stubbornness on when I can actually work.

I am also sorry if my readers find this part boring. I found myself in the situation of Abraham Lincoln's minister: the man began writing a sermon and found himself too lazy to stop.

August was a hell of a month: I was able to see HTTYD at AMC Theatres thanks to their Summer Movie Camp program, where movie tickets are a dollar per person and proceeds go to charity. Thanks to my bosses, in the unlikely event they read this.

In regards to the title I was trying to find for Miko Maleficus, a number of you said that I had been looking for the superb "A Downed Dragon is a Dead Dragon" as a matter of fact, I had been thinking of "Valkyrie", another excellent story. Thanks to those who responded in the communal spirit.

In this chapter, we have discovered that Hiccup and Gobber made an invention that changed the world. Truly, they were ahead of their time.

EDIT 10/16/10

**Backroads: **Thank you for your kind words. I enjoy your stories and found "Ashes" very moving.

**lordsesshomaru2:** I was pleased to see such a long and very well written review for my story. Since I do not expect to have the next chapter up until sometime in August, I would like to answer you now instead of waiting to do so in the chapter.  
First off, I honestly cannot say what the age of the teenagers are. I first assumed they were fifteen and a friend of mine says they were fourteen. I am not exactly certain where canon stands on this point. Nor can I really say much about Hiccup's height beyond that I don't think he'll match his father, who is a very large man.  
I too believe that people have to take parts of stories seriously, and that you take the time to think about these things says a great deal about you. Authors who inject a bit of reality into their work usually produce stories of excellent quality, and if you are planning to submit any works yourself, I think it would be a good read.  
I am sorry to say I may not be ale to match the length of this chapter throughout the story, but I'm going to give it a shot.  
Finally, it was very flattering of you to ask but no, I am not a published author; simply one who does this as a hobby.  
Thank you for your review and your thoughts. I look forward to any works you might put forward yourself in the future; you obviously have the brains for good storytelling.

**Mediadragon: **Now, you know!

**GhibiGirl91: **I got mine at my local Borders, and the badass picture is on page 66: one of the concept drawings of the character. His stance and the look in his eye is that of an entirely different character.

Thanks to everyone who reviewed. Next chapter, we start getting serious...after some jokes.


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